The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a storage medium, and a program. More particularly, the invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a storage medium, and a program for acquiring, illustratively from e-mail content, words and related information likely to attract a user's attention before storing the acquired information into a database and retrieving the suitable information therefrom for effective presentation to the user.
There exists application programs that display a so-called desktop mascot on the desktop (i.e., display screen) of a personal computer.
The desktop mascot is designed to have capabilities such as those of informing the user of the arrival of e-mails and of moving on its own across the desktop.
While the user is entering a document of an e-mail to be sent out or reading a received e-mail, it is convenient if the user is presented by the desktop mascot with information related to the document being handled (the information is called the related information hereunder). The user is likely to become attached all the more to the desktop mascot if it offers such convenient features.
Illustratively, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-312515 proposes a method for automatically creating a database using processed text files such as e-mails in order to present users with information related to documents having been sent out or received.
One disadvantage of the proposed method above is that it merely extracts related information from the database based on the target document. There are no arrangements by which to reflect degrees of the user's interest in the related information selected for presentation.